Wednesday, 23 May 2012

So finally I've writing tournament reports of events I went to this year. And first up is one close to my heart: Warpcon 2012. Warpcon held a 1850pt, Warhammer 40,000 tournament in UCC on the last weekend of January. It was also utilising a very interesting 2 missions per mission rulespack. It was different from the one that was used in the TOWN by putting more weight on the secondary objective. It was also the first 2 day tournament where I'd be using the new Necron Codex.

They said they'd be back.

The list I was using was what I affectionately call my "So many new things so I took one of everything" list:

As you can probably tell, the name wasn't picked ironically. I can't do irony.

Will I make a Tony Starch joke? Yes, yes I will.

Basically the ingenious plan behind my list was I was waiting for a new codex for ages. Therefore, I wanted to use all of the things, all of the time. Which I did. It was glorious. It's at this point I should say that I really like the new codex. Good but not to the retarded level of Space Wolves or Grey Knights. Cool tricks involving entropic strike and night-fighting but still quite fragile.

Anyway, I seem to be getting distracted by all this talk of wargames. It turns out that the Friday night of Warpcon was also the day that I finished my end of year exams. This led to many, many drinks being consumed. Some would say too many drinks but I don't hang out with people like that, so it's fine. After being a good Samaritan and helping transport and set up tables I parked my car in UCC with the direct intention of being unfit to drive for several days. While setting up tables the lads from Dublin arrived down, Alec "Black Templars" Cornelius, Peter "Richard Gere" Scott and newbie Ryan "Emily" McMullan. Also Bobert "Oh crap, my Drop Pods are on fire" Brennan was there but, to be honest, I see that guy all the time. He might as well move to Cork. HINT HINT.

Insert obligatory picture of Alcohol.

So anyway, we met a plethora of nerds in the Old Bar and formed to become the most formidable quiz team of all time. This time we even had a girl. An actual girl and not just Jiggy. The way I remember it, we won the quiz, were applauded as fantastic nerds and then I continued to act in a responsible manner for the rest of the evening. It was either that or we(I'm using "we" quite liberally) tried to ruin the quiz, shouted and were playing a ridiculous cruel game of roll dice and drink beer(hmmm.... sounds like Skibbcon). After many a beer, shot and other various alcoholi it was home for a good 4 hours sleep before having to be up to play in the morning.

The next morning.

So OW. My head hurt but I managed to get myself down to UCC(which is more effort than I put into my entire of 3rd year). After many hellos and hugs to all the people who came down early on the Saturday it was time to get all matched up. I was playing James "Mage" Carey of BannerCon fame. I was gutted to have missed that one as the lads have told me about how much fun it was. James was playing an Eldar hybrid lists. It had:
Elderad
Wraithlord
Big Guardians squad
2 Fireprisims
Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents
Lots of Dire Avengers with Bladestorm.
More Wave Serpents?

I won first turn which put James in a bad situation. I had a moderate amount of S8 firepower but combined with the Triarch Stalker and the chronometron it was all very reliable. So as is not uncommon with Eldar he went full reserve. I used the 2 turns to spread out. Wraiths and a lord on a barge down one flank, scarabs spyders and Anrakyr down the other. The Stalker walked down the middle with the guns getting into a good position. Half his things came on first turn. The wraiths went after the guardians and wraithlord. The scarabs ate themselves a serpent. While my lord swept a firm prism. When my wraiths managed to tag the Wraithlord into the combat versus the guardians he died to Fearless saves.

Lord of the who? Must be different Wraiths.

The rest of the game went poorly for James with his dire avengers failing to kill my Wraiths leaving enough time for my furious-charging immortals time to deepstrike over and assault next turn. The scarabs and anrakyr teamed up to maul more tanks and go after Elderad once he'd become unmeched. Unfortunately just before the game could end James was called away and had to concede the game. It was a shame as I had a lovely time playing him. He's a great opponent and I have no trouble seeing why BannerCon was such a success.20 - 0 to me.

This put me up on Table 2 with Rowan "Why don't I just jump on this band-wagon" Sheridan playing a Venom heavy Dark Eldar Tesla heavy Necron list. To be honest, I can't ridicule his list as being all spam and broken-ness because it was the exact way I was going to go before I went with the Dana approach. His list was:
Nemesor Zandrek w/barge
Obyron
Anrakyr w/ barge
1 gun squad of Crypteks, 1 with veils and pulses.
3 Annihilation Barge
2 squads of Wraiths
Immortals
Warriors

We both decided to leave the pulses at home to get around the whole Daytime, Night-time problem.
We started off and the first thing I did was charge a 6 man Wraith
squad into his 5 man Wraith squad with a mindshackle lord. With that happening
in the middle of the board I tried to slow his stuff down. Obyron hopped
in his bosses barge and was slowing making his way towards me along
with the second squad of Wraiths. I didn't have near enough guns to kill his
stuff. His wraiths won out in the middle of the board and he had his
objective well covered on his side of the board. I did, however, swamp
Anrakyr's Barge and mange to stop him from setting out, so that made me
feel better.

Suck it Other Anrakyr.

18 - 2 to Rowan.

So for my third delay to my drinking on Saturday I was playing Lloyd "I still remember those Red Imperial Guard" Courtney of The Last Chancers. I was delighted because Lloyd was the second person I'd ever played a full game of 40k with back in game 2 of Warpcon 09. He was also the first person to ever table me. Now I get a chance to get even. Lloyd was playing Dark Angels. No, not Deathwing, Dark Angels. His list was:
Interrogator Chaplain
Belial
Troop Termie Squad
Venerable Combat Dread
Big Assault Squad
Tactical Squad in a rhino
Tactical squad in a Drop Pod
2 Predators

So the table we were at had a piece of terrain in the middle courtesy of Donal "Right, okay" Casey. It was an awesome Ork Fortress. Beautifully detailed and HUGE. It took up the entire centre of the table. It reminded me of a very evil piece of terrain from Gaelcon that took advantage of poor drunk Eoin. We decided to make the walls impassable as we both had jump infantry squads so we would be a very interesting game revolving around this terrain piece. It was kill points primary, 1 objective each secondary with deployment as Dawn of War. Both objectives were deployed on one side of the fortress. I won first turn and I set up my cryteks, and 2 troops on my objective hoping to shoot anything that showed up. Lloyd brought everything on the other side of the fortress out of line of sight of my army.

And you can't shoot what you can't see.

My wraiths jumped into the fortress ready for action and hid for 2 turns while my scarabs got shot and slowly made their way towards his things. My two lords hopped into the assault squad causing the marines to do more harm to themselves than anything else. My stalker hung around my objective pretty safe, ready to destroy the tac squad and drop pod that would poised to show up at any moment. Turns out Lloyd had been told previously that scarabs are a lot scarier than they actually are, which explains the hanging back. It's didn't take too long however for him to realise he just needed to charge them and he'd be all good. The game got very bloody towards the end but I managed to get more kill points and Lloyd's defensive strategy left the two objectives in my possession too. Vps were brutal though and the game ended with a win to me. Not the utter hammering Lloyd gave me back in the day but it went a ways to patching the wounds.

And he didn't.

17 - 3 to me.

So then it was drinking time. A pile of us headed to Captain America's for dinner. For my dinner I had a Long Island Ice Tea. I emphasise the LONG as I got a Cocktail Tower. These things are awesome. Unfortunately no amount of sweet, alcoholy goodness could convince Sylvan to come back to the Old Bar with us so into a taxi we went and took off to the land of Beer(UCC Old Bar). Here I played an exhibition match or Red or Black against no 1 contender for my world championship title. The game ended rather suddenly when I predicted the joker and won the universe. Also, Burkhardt the mean German made me cry. The night ended with a bunch of people having to hear Drunk Eoin talk about why the new Necron Codex was the best thing to happen since Batman became a thing.

I later found out that Batman is a Necron.

Cue Sunday and a horribly hungover taxi ride to UCC. My head was killing me. I finally got in the door and was greeted with the great news that I was to play Mike Tagney, ETC Captain and all around way too good a player to play drunk-gover. It was also nice to see that Mike's list had been made specifically with killing Wraiths, Scarabs and Necrons in general, firmly in mind. I think this was because of two of his clubmates bringing Necron lists down. Thanks guys...

I had various different flashbacks to the only other time I'd played Mike before. It was in Athlone, with old Necrons, when I was too hungover to move. I had to tell him to roll all of the dice and I'd believe him and just let me die inside until I needed to roll saves. I'm some classy opponent. We were playing the 5 objective game and Mike had ALL OF THE TROOPS. Well long story short here, Mike destroyed me. He's a great player and I just couldn't handle those Ymargls. Why have these not been in every Tyranid list ever? Great game, apart from the Hangover of Doom.

I was so hungover my teeth hurt.

Loss 17 - 3

Game 5 had me against Cork gamer James Howell. Although he's a WAC-head I'd never had many dealings with James as he games mainly on the weekends, when I go down to Skibbereen and he can't come to games on Thursdays because of his work schedule. James was playing Space Wolves with everyone's favourite Great Wolf(After John Stowe), Logan Grimar. His list was:
Logan
Long Fangs
Large Grey Hunter squads in Rhinos
Tiny Wolf Guard Squads in Razorbacks
Wolf Scouts

Ah, the familiar look of cheating with Space Wolves.

This was a brilliant game with lots of back and forth, his scouts taking out my Stalker early and all of his Grey Hunters destroying my Wraiths. There was a Giant Combat with a big squad of Long Fangs and Grey Hunters in combat with a big unit of scarabs that meant that my mindshackle lord could pick on Logan and make him punch himself over and over. Silly Logan. Scarabs were the MVPs in this match making James job just way too difficult. Game ended after 7 turns of slaughter to a victory for me. James is a fantastic opponent and hope to find a way of playing his Wolves again soon.

Win 17 - 3

So I finished up on about 59 BPs, 1 BP and place behind Ryan "Cheating with Space Wolves" McMullan. I had a fantastic time and learned so much more about my new codex. I want to thank Colin and all of the lads for the sterling job, all of my opponents and everybody who was there to make the whole event spectacular. Big shout out goes to Lenny for making some class buns for the ETC fund-raising and winning Merv's predator in a game of "Throw the dice in Merv's tank to win it".

Friday, 18 May 2012

Anyone surprised by the fact I'm writing a tournament report so soon after my Gaelcon (well in Eoin terms it's soon) will be relieved to hear that I haven't gone mad, this one is about a tournament held nearly a whole year ago. SkibbCon 2 followed on from the fine tradition of SkibbCon in many ways. It was still situated in Russagh Mill, it still had an emphasis on having fun and most importantly drinking. However, some changes were made, mainly to facilitate more people being able to come. As such SkibbCon 2.0, held from the 10th to 12th of June 2011, was a Warhammer 40,000 doubles tournament with no more than 1000pts being spent by each team member using a standard Force Org chart(remember that part as it comes up later on). The only other restriction was that both the armies on a team must be similarly aligned to the Forces of Order or Disorder.

18 teams were signed up as of Friday night from all over the place. We had a large contingent down from The Town as well as some people I didn't know from Limerick. After much "socializing"(please note that in this article this means heavy drinking) it was time for the table quiz. After having through the shame of last year's mix up with the team names, things were a lot more organised. Now there is no age filter on this site so I can't go into detail about a lot of the team names but apparently Caolán likes to suck balls of many different types and in great volume. The majority of the team names were a testament to this. The quiz was tense where cheating and blackmail were rife and a threat of physical bodily harm was doled out to Andrew Kirwan, who was not in attendance, by SWG president Cian. In the end it was the aforementioned ball-sucker's team who won and netted themselves a nice bottle of alcohol. I suppose we could have given something more sensible as a prize but shut up.

After the quiz it was time for another SkibbCon tradition, drunk poker. It was impressive to see that even though Jason "REALLY likes Stephen Fry" Lane was playing poker he could also play another game that I think is called "Hey! You look like you're winning poker, have some absinthe". It should be noted that even though he was playing that game he still managed to drink an unholy amount of the stuff himself. Much merriment was had including ringing Dave "Crap at 40k" Coleman at 3 in the morning to shout at him. My night ended when at half 5 I was told I should go to bed as I was too drunk and had to organise things in the morning.

I'm sorry. I'm sure it won't happen again................

So in the morning I awoke, begrudgingly, to find some nice breakfast and some new attendees who had driven down from Dublin and Limerick. After hating them for not having hangovers it was time to begin a marathon of 40k.It continued for many, many hours but hey, we were eating and sleeping in the same place so there was no need to hurry. Not that anyone tried. Because I wasn't playing this next part are just going to be a selection of photographs and abusive comments.

Gribble gribble

1 Grey Knight model versus most of a Tyranid Army

Here we see Ivan's Vindicare Assassin about to be charged by a large part of Derek Barry's Tyranid army. Unsurprisingly, the Grey Knight won out, proving even more that Ivan only plays crutch armies. Also, that lack of a paint job by Ivan cost his team a podium finish.

I can't look at this any other way than John whispering to his models.

After spending so long talking on the internet and on podcasts about how much he wanted to attend SkibbCon we see John "Doesn't drink his whiskey" Stowe playing the fluffy and fun Deathclut in Landraider spam with Long Fang spam combo.

All Infanty Guard

If you look closely at this picture you can see a finger pointing at the infantry in David Chamber's famous infantry guard list. HINT: They're in the tanks.

Mt. Long Fang

Here we have 36 long fangs on a single terrain piece. This army belongs to the Double Space Wolf combo of Chris and Ulick. That is a seriously undercosted ruined building.

Mt Fire Warrior

Yes, that is the same building. This time full of Pa's Firewarriors. I'm going to go right ahead and say that's not as point efficient as the Long Fang one.

Taking Neck Beard to a new level

Ah my nemesis. Alec "The Gypsy" Cornelius picture here with former SkibbCon winner Tristram "Just back from a wedding" Hills.

I'm glad this thing has a flash

In the absence of solar pulses we had to have a way of introducing Night fighting in a non Dawn of War mission. Solution: Still be playing games at half 11 at night. All thanks to Bruce "Not playing Tau this time" Sutton's apparently invincible Land Speeder.

WTF are these things?

Pictured are, I think, Kevin's Eldar. They were partnered to the invic-land speeder having marines. I just don't have any idea what those models are meant to represent. Proixied Fire Dragons? That's probably it.

So after the day's games wrapped up, around half eleven it was time for the serious drinking to take place. However, before this could begin there was a slight problem. It turns out there was a problem with one teams list. Now this team will remain nameless but it seems like Dan Ahern and Pat Corr thought they were playing in a 2004pt doubles tournament. Now as I was trying to come up with an amicable solution to this predicament I had Dan constantly repeating this one sentence to me: "Shut up, give us 0 points and drink this." So I did.

Many hilarious things happened. One of my favourites was when I dumped a bucket of ice water on Chris and Tadhg. It was totally worth having to go outside in the rain, to get a mop and clean it up. We rang Dave again, ha suck it, Dave. Red or Black was also played. I still maintain it's the most taxing of drinking games. Damn you, Alec. And to a lesser extent damn you too, Stowe. My girlfriend had to carry a hammered drunk, sorry, food poisoned Tristram up a flight of stairs as he tried to requisition my room. I would have helped her but, ....... yeah.

Yeah.

So I think I got to bed. I'm not sure. I don't remember waking up. I spent the entire next day hammered. Walking around, being unhelpful and shouting for no reason. Again I wasn't playing so here are more pictures.

Alec: "What do you think we should do here, Tris?"

Tris: "I'll catch them off guard by pretending to be asleep then you roll dice at them until they die"

Here are some pictures of Alec and Tristram playing "Best Army" Winners Darran and Bob. Team Town were thrown in at the deep-end here after finding themselves in 3rd position after being gifted 20 points by the generous Team Cheating. Turns out Wraithlords don't like massive amounts of venoms. Who knew?

SWG's president Cian hoping using an actual battery will help keep his Battlewagon going

Can it see us? Oh balls.

So because we felt bad for Team Cheater we decided to give Dan and Pat a very special gift. SWG member Sylvan had made some absolutely amazing seals for us to give as prizes and we could think of no better recipients of these impurity seals than these guys.

Dan is the smuggest man in the world.

So that was it really, or as much as I can coherently remember. I'm really looking forward to the event this year and finally getting to play in a doubles game. I want to thank everyone who came down to our convention. I want to congratulate all of those who won prizes:

I also want to thank Craig for his invaluable help with admin. The SWGers: Caolán, Chris, Cian, Emma, Pa, Sylvan and Tadhg for their invaluable help with everything else. You guys are a great bunch of people to cater for and here's to many more SkibbCons. I'll just leave you with one thought....